Food Systems at COP29
"The Finance COP" is nearly midway through. Where are we on Food Systems discussions?
“They heard his words and they didn't care for the consequences because they thought the consequences didn't come for them.
“And that to me is an indictment of any person's spirit. It's an indictment of any person's ethics. The idea that you know that what someone will do will be monstrous, but because of the target of that monstrosity won't be you, have at it.
“And when, you know, the monster, its hands and teeth still dripping with blood is handing you a morsel... For me, the cost of that is too high."
This quote from John Amaechi resonates with me so much I’ve been sharing it everywhere. In fact, I may share it regularly over the next four years, to remind myself this is what happens when people care only about their own skin and their own kin, and nobody else’s.
If you want to listen to the full conversation, it’s here.
P.S. Sorry this newsletter is terribly late. I blame a storm that delayed flights for hours, airports with few sitting areas, and hour-long queues.
P.P.S. Thanks to Ed King, Ed Davey, Jenny Briggs, A Growing Culture, and many more for helping me make sense of what’s going on in Baku.
P.P.P.S. I just recovered from a short but very unpleasant fight with flu. Do take care of yourselves. Also, apologies in advance for typos and errors.
Last year’s climate negotiations were dubbed “The Food COP” because after nearly three decades, food systems finally had its day, literally speaking.
It wasn’t an unmitigated success though and I wrote about feeling like “it’s one step forward and half a step back”. That’s probably how these discussions work though, and besides, it was still a massive improvement from the days when food and agriculture didn’t get any mention whatsoever.
This year, according to pretty much everyone, is “The Finance COP” because what’s at stake is a new and ambitious agreement on climate finance. Rich countries, who have been (and still are) the main polluters, need to come up with cash for poor countries who continue to bear the brunt of climate impacts.
“COP29 is a test of wealthy countries’ commitment to securing a liveable planet,” Tessa Anderson, ActionAid International’s Global Lead on Climate Justice said in a statement before the negotiations began.
Still, there will be another day dedicated to food: COP29’s Food, Agriculture and Water Day is slated for Nov 19 (Tuesday).
The Context
The meeting in Baku is happening against a backdrop of large-scale weather disasters that have killed people and harvests, increasingly fraught geopolitics, a general deficit in democratic principles, and climate targets that seem further than ever.
“It is now virtually certain that 2024 will be the warmest year on record,” according to the latest bulletin from the European Union's Copernicus Climate Change Service. It also said 2024 will be the first year to “overshoot” the target to limit global warming to 1.5°C above pre-industrial level. Scientists say temperature rises above that could lead to devastating climate events.
The World Meteorological Organisation (WMO) also issued a red alert early this week “at the sheer pace of climate change in a single generation, turbo-charged by ever-increasing greenhouse gas levels in the atmosphere”. For 16 consecutive months between June 2023 and September 2024, the global mean temperature likely exceeded anything recorded before, and often by a wide margin, it said.
In the meantime, levels of nitrous oxide (N₂O), the primary ozone-depleting substance also known as laughing gas, are rising faster than expected, a new report by the UN environment and food agencies said. N₂O is approximately 270 times more potent than carbon dioxide and currently responsible for approximately 10% of net global warming since the industrial revolution. Agriculture, such as the use of synthetic fertilisers and manure, is the main source of this emission.
On the other side of the coin, this thread on Bluesky from the land, food & farming lead for The Energy and Climate Intelligence Unit (ECIU), vividly laid out the impact of increasingly unpredictable weather on British harvests.
A terrible tragedy continues to unfold in Gaza, where famine is “imminent”. An FAO analysis found “nearly 70% of croplands – which contributed up to one-third of daily consumption – have been destroyed; over 70% of olive trees and orchards have been burned to the ground; … and 95% of cattle and more than half of sheep and goat herds, have died.” Yes, this is a result of conflict, but wars contribute to climate change too and a 2022 paper estimated that military accounts for 5.5% of global emissions. That’s higher than Russia’s emissions.
On the opening day of COP29, UN climate boss Simon Stiell made the link between climate change and food, warning delegates the climate crisis will spike food costs globally. This is something that has scientific basis. A March 2024 analysis in Nature said “higher temperatures increase food and headline inflation persistently over 12 months”.
More than 9 out of 10 Europeans surveyed in August said it is important for their countries to adapt to climate change. More than 8 in 10 believed this means investing now to avoid higher costs later. These are findings from the European Investment Bank’s annual Climate Survey. It also found 80% of EU respondents (89% in southern European countries) have experienced at least one extreme weather event in the last five years. Last year’s survey looked at just transition and climate knowledge.
The Drama
The No-Shows: You may have seen the headlines about Papua New Guinea skipping COP29, but according to people who are there, they did turn up. However, there are others who left early (or) have decided to forgo it.
Argentina’s rightwing libertarian president who has apparently called the climate crisis a “socialist lie”, withdrew the country’s delegation and is now making noises about pulling out of the Paris Agreement altogether.
On the other hand, France’s environment minister is supposedly not coming after Azerbaijan President Aliyev, in an interesting diplomatic approach, accused Paris of ‘brutal suppression’ in the Pacific.
The Critics: In an open letter, some big names in the climate, policy, and science space have called Stiell and world leaders for “a fundamental overhaul of the COP”, saying “its current structure simply cannot deliver the change at exponential speed and scale”.
It suggested seven measures for reform including having a strict eligibility criteria when selecting who gets to host the climate negotiations, shifting away from negotiations to the delivery of concrete action, mechanisms to hold countries accountable for their commitments, and ensuring equitable representation between fossil fuel lobbyists and scientific institutions, Indigenous communities and vulnerable nations.
Signatories include Ban Ki-Moon (former UN Secretary-General), Christiana Figueres (a former UN climate chief and predecessor of Stiell), Mary Robinson (former president of Ireland), and Johan Rockström (head of the Potsdam Institute for Climate Action Research).
The Biggest Elephant in the Room: Even though he won’t take power for a while, Trump and his wrecking ball tendencies loom large. He has threatened to withdraw not only from the Paris Agreement but also from the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change.
But it’s not just climate diplomacy that is on the line. If Trump follows through with plans drawn up by Project 2025, we’re talking about weakening (or decimating) the rules to protect environment and human health from the worst excesses of industrial agriculture.
We can also expect little to no effort to reduce greenhouse gas emissions from agriculture, which currently accounts for 10% of U.S. emissions. There are questions too about what would happen to all the investment in climate-smart agriculture championed by the Biden administration, a topic I touched on in a previous issue.
Food aid, particularly foreign food aid, is another area that could see disruption. According to Devex, the U.S. contributed nearly four times the amount of humanitarian funding to food as the next-closest donor, Germany, in 2023. While he left this pot of money largely untouched during his first term, it’s anyone’s guess how he’ll behave in the second term.
Signs aren’t encouraging if the status of the $1.5 trillion U.S. farm bill is anything to go by. Devex wrote:
“The bill, which sets the country’s agricultural and nutrition policy, has been languishing for more than a year. At an international level, this is important because it also controls operations for Food for Peace, the flagship U.S. food program that feeds millions of people worldwide. Republicans won control of the Senate, and if they also retain control of the House (Thin: they did) it could pave the way for passage of a version of the bill that would strip much of this food aid.”
The Effects
So what’s happening with food systems in Baku?
The Money: Most observers will judge COP29 on whether the delegates can reach an agreement on climate finance, officially called the New Collective Quantified Goal (NCQG). If this happens, sector specific goals including for food systems may come later, said Edward Davey, Senior Advisor at the Food and Land Use Coalition (FOLU). “At the moment food systems, which contribute 1/3 of GHG emissions, receive less than 4% of climate finance.”
SSJW: I’m afraid I can’t do this one without jumping into the jargon soup. SSJW stands for “Sharm el-Sheikh joint work on implementation of climate action on agriculture and food security”. It’s a successor to the Koronivia Joint Work on Agriculture, aka the only formal process through which food and agriculture are included in the UN climate discussions.
It had an ignominious end at the last COP when negotiations concluded with no agreements of substance. Will there be any movements this year?
“No - the negotiators are meeting only a handful of times and the entire discussion has been about the online portal,” said Oliver Camp, Environment and Food Systems Advocacy Advisor at Global Alliance for Improved Nutrition (GAIN), who is following this closely.
“Work continues on the synthesis report. Otherwise, we look forward to the workshops in 2025 and 2026, where substance will be discussed.”
The workshops he’s referring to were agreed at talks earlier this year. According to Ed from FOLU, they will be on embedding climate action within agriculture and food systems (in 2025) and accessing and mobilising means of implementation for countries to advance climate action in agriculture (in 2026).
NDCs: These are the blueprints countries have drawn up to outline their plans to slash emissions.
Last year, 162 world leaders signed the COP28 UAE Declaration on Sustainable Agriculture, Resilient Food Systems, and Climate Action, committing to integrate food systems and agriculture into their NDCs by COP30 in November 2025. We’re now at the midway mark and only 40 countries have done this, according to Ed (FOLU), but there is hope the number will increase by Food Day or the end of next week.
Part of this could come from members of the Alliance of Champions for Food Systems Transformation (ACF). Launched during last year’s COP, they also committed to strengthen pathways for food systems transformation and revise key documents. Members countries will be reporting their progress on Food Day.
Methane: This very potent GHG is 84 to 86 times more powerful than carbon dioxide over a 20-year period and accounts for around 35% of food-system emissions in both developed and developing countries, mainly due to livestock production. Bloomberg said China alone accounts for 10% of global CH4 emissions, largely from the oil /gas and agricultural sectors.
Which is why the Global Methane Pledge was launched in 2021, with a goal of slashing emissions by 30% by 2030, compared to 2020 levels. Nearly 160 countries have signed on to it. But emissions, including from agriculture, continue to go in the wrong direction.
The announcements I’ve seen so far on methane at COP29 has been for oil and gas companies in the US (whether it will survive the incoming administration is another matter) and landfill. But a document from Mukhtar Babayev, COP29 president and Azerbaijan’s minister of ecology and natural resources, announced the declaration on organic waste explicitly addressed emissions associated with food systems but I don’t know if the text remains intact or has been changed.
There is definitely more talk about it. At a one-day event hosted by Bloomberg, the news agency quoted Bezos Earth Fund’s Andrew Steer as saying methane is currently the worst source of climate change and we are on “a path of destruction” with the rate the world is eating beef.
“The fund is backing solutions that help cows emit less methane. It’s also investing in AI, which Steer said could help design tastier alternative proteins,” Bloomberg wrote.
Regenerative Agriculture: Last year, some of the biggest pesticide companies and commodity traders jumped on the 'regenerative agriculture’ bandwagon. I haven’t had the chance to follow up on those pledges, so if you know the latest developments, please drop me a line.
Many remain unconvinced of the concept. UK’s Soil Association said in a statement that “regenerative is an expression of intent without a clear definition or set of legally binding standards and practices”, while A Growing Culture told me: “We generally are very sceptical when words like "regenerative" are used to describe agriculture because of the fact that this buzzword is very co-optable, and very apolitical.”
“There have been "significant" pledges made last year. But what would the implementation of all these commitments actually look like on the ground? Language like “scaling up sustainable agriculture” and “climate-resilient food systems” could translate into just about anything in practice. Using smartphone + sensor technology can be labelled as a “sustainable” solution to monitor nitrogen-levels and tell farmers when to apply synthetic fertiliser. Commitments to “reduce greenhouse gas emissions” and “mitigate” climate impact could translate into growing monoculture, non locally-adapted / non-native trees,” said A Growing Culture.
“Our biggest worry is that these pledges which are mostly focused on the environmental aspect of the crisis invisibilise the political and social structures that make the environmental degradation (as well as direct and indirect violence on the global majority) possible. There is commitment on regenerating land, but not one on land reform,” they added.
The Trump Factor: Again, it’s anybody’s guess what he’ll do but some seem cautiously optimistic. I do wonder if the plant-based folks might be too optimistic.
“The US election results may be one of several factors leading to an atmosphere of low trust and poor relationships, notably between developed countries and developing countries… But climate action does not wait for or depend on one nation, and other countries will continue with their own priorities at national level, while also trying to step up to cover for any reduced involvement of the US in the international arena. There is concern and suspicion, but it would be a mistake to assume that this is fatal.” Oliver, GAIN
“NGOs like ProVeg will continue to encourage Governments, including the incoming US Administration, to promote policies that support the booming plant-based foods market. In the US, the plant-based foods market is expected to grow from $8.8 billion in value in 2023 to a projected $19 billion in 2030. We imagine the next US Administration will want to support this successful and growing market where it can.” Juliette Tronchon, Head of UN Affairs, ProVeg International
I’m going to end this rather long piece with a quote from Matthew Kessler, who was featured in last week’s issue. When I asked him what his hopes are for food systems at COP29, he had this to say:
“We need to pay more attention to food. We need to keep it on the agenda, not just like a box ticking exercise, but because food systems intersect with everything in society. And if we can put more attention towards food, we can advance a lot of cross cutting solutions”
Resistance Diaries: A Kite Tales Exhibition
If you are in Bangkok on December 4 (Wednesday), do drop by at the Foreign Correspondents Club Thailand for the opening of an exhibition of artwork from The Kite Tales, a non-profit storytelling project I co-founded.
We’ve been supporting struggling Myanmar journalist and storytellers for the past three years to write and illustrate anonymous diaries about life under a military dictatorship. More information about the event here.
Thin’s Pickings
Oh FFS: A guide to climate change jargon and acronyms - The New Humanitarian
If you can’t differentiate between AOSIS from CVF, or NCQC from NDC, you should read this.
Lessons on media policy at the slaughter-bench of history - Matt Pearce
This essay is about journalism and the role of press in the Trump era, particularly after his resounding win, and has nothing to do with food and climate. But it’s a must-read for anyone who want access to accurate, impartial news, even if they couldn’t care less about a free press.
Revisiting our food’s hidden costs - Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations
This interactive story is for those who don’t have the time or the inclination to read the full report of The State of Food and Agriculture 2024 published last week. The previous issue, which I covered here, was groundbreaking in putting a number on the health, environmental and social costs of our current agrifood systems.
This year’s edition refined the process and broke down the cost depending on the type of agrifood systems.
As always, please feel free to share this post and send tips and thoughts on bluesky @thinink.bsky.social, mastodon @ThinInk@journa.host, my LinkedIn page, or via e-mail thin@thin-ink.net.